Thy Master's Bidding

Although Dizzy has covered the issue well here, now would be a good time to remember how the City's corporate governance guidelines operate in "The Combined Code: Principles of Good Governance and Code of Best Practice."

As the chickens come home to roost after ten years of economic sleight-of-hand, juggling the stats, cooking the books and outright lies, we are reminded that were the Labour government an accountable institution (ie, to its constituents/shareholders) Gordon Brown's move to PM might not have been so easy to manage.

This issue was raised before during the Blair/Brown coup succession and damn if I can't remember by who, but the gist of it is the Higgs Report rules of corporate governance for the City states:

The Code’s overall aim is to enhance board effectiveness and to improve investor confidence by raising standards of corporate governance. Its main features are:

• ........

• the separation of the roles of the chairman and the chief executive to be reinforced;
  
• a chief executive should not go on to become chairman of the same company;

The point being that a person in a position of responsibility for the financial performance of a company - and it's reporting - should not move into a position of authority over his successor for the simple reason that it is far too easy to cover up past misdeeds. A situation we have now with Gordon Brown and his very own personal Renfield, Alastair Darling.